"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." --Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949 "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." --Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943 "I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." --The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957 "But what ... is it good for?" --Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip. "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." --Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment, 1977 "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." --Western Union internal memo, 1876. "Video won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night." -- Darryl F. Zanuck, Head of 20th Century-Fox Studios, 1946 "The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?" --David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s. "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." --Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895. "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." --Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads. "So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we' ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" --Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer. "Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." --1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work. "You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." --Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus. "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." --Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre. "Everything that can be invented has been invented." --Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899. "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction". --Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872 "The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon". --Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon- Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873. "The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible." --A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.) "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" --H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927. "I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper." --Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind." "A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make." --Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies. "We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." --Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962. "Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." --Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859. "Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." --Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929. "The so-called theories of Einstein are merely the ravings of a mind polluted with liberal, democratic nonsense which is utterly unacceptable to German men of science." -- Dr. Walter Gross, 1940 "The theory of a relativistic universe is the hostile work of the agents of fascism. It is the revolting propaganda of a moribund, counter-revolutionary ideology." -- Astronomical Journal of the Soviet Union, 1940 "I am tired of all this thing called science.... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped." -- Simon Cameron, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, demanding that the funding of the Smithsonian Institution be cut off, 1861 "Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years." -- Alex Lewyt, quoted in the New York Times, 1955 "X-rays are a hoax." -- Lord Kelvin, ca. 1900 "I can accept the theory of relatively as little as I can accept the existence of atoms and other such dogmas." -- Ernst Mach, 1913 "A nuclear power plant is infinitely safer than eating, because 300 people choke to death on food every year." -- Dixy Lee Ray, Governor of Washington, 1977 "I would not call it an accident. I would call it a malfunction. It just so happens that the antinuclear movement, lacking a real accident, has latched onto this one, promoting it into something that it isn't." -- Dr. Edward Teller, on Three Mile Island "My dynamite will sooner lead to peace Than a thousand world conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant Whole armies can be utterly destroyed They surely will abide by golden peace." -- Alfred Nobel, 1833-1896 "Never in history has mankind been given more reason to look forward to the future with hope. For the blast which blew nineteenth-century nationalism to pieces at Hiroshima may also have cleared the way for a new Renaissance--a new era of co-operation leading up to the twentieth-century Empire of the World." -- Lynn Montross, 1946 "[Sputnik is] a hunk of iron almost anybody could launch." -- Rear Admiral Rawson Bennett, 1957 "[Before man reaches the moon] your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.... We stand on the threshold of rocket mail." -- Arthur E. Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General, 1959 "Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean." -- Dr. Dionysus Lardner, 1838